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Flowers Grow Out of My Grave
|release=November 1, 2018 |runtime=44 minutes |rating=TV-PG |available=Apple TV Google Play Amazon Video}} " " is a Day of the Dead themed episode of the ABC drama , producd and aired as the sixth episode of its fifteenth season. Synopsis Tuck is decorating a skull while Bailey gets ready for work. Tuck tells her about Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday where people who have died come back to visit you. Meanwhile, Bailey finds a paper detailing Ben's death benefit. Zola and a friend are also dressed up for Day of the Dead. They show their costumes for the parade at school to Maggie. Meredith walks in all dressed up. Cece got her another date, with an English teacher or a professor. As Meredith leaves with the girls, she tells Maggie that Teddy is planning on speaking to Owen. Maggie will believe it when she sees it. Owen invites Teddy into his house. Amelia isn't home. Teddy apologizes for the way she left last month. It's been confusing. Owen says he should be apologizing. Amelia comes in looking for Betty. She dropped her off at school, but after she dropped off Leo at daycare, the school called to say that Betty never showed. Her phone has been turned off. Amelia fears she's doing drugs. Teddy offers to help look for Betty. Jo and Alex arrive at the hospital. He's too busy for a lunch date. He asks her to post a flyer to remind interns and residents to vote. She's not Chief Resident anymore, but since he doesn't know who is, she will do it. He walks off after a kiss. Link then shows up and tells her she's a good Interim First Lady. Jo says Alex is grumpy all the time. He jokes it's just Meredith. Jo then tries to set him up with Meredith, but Link says she's not into him. Jo knows Meredith takes a while to open up, but she's worth it. Jo leaves to prepare for her first solo transplant surgery. Levi shows up. He's on Link's service today. As they walk off, Levi tells Nico it's his first time on ortho. Nico will teach him. Roberta is giving Denise instructions on her funeral. She wants proper mourning. Bailey and Jo come in. They remind Roberta that they have a liver for her. Roberta knows, but she's been burned before. Jo lists all previous treatments for Roberta's Wilson's disease. As Roberta suspected, Nurse Taylor comes in with bad news: the liver has been diverted. Roberta again reminds Denise she wants a proper funeral with crying. Andrew enters Flor's room and finds her family singing. They are celebrating Day of the Dead. They built an ofrenda in Flor's room. Meredith and Alex come in. They explain they have found a choledochal cyst in her biliary tract, so Meredith is scrubbing in with Alex. It'll take longer than they originally planned, but they'll take good care of her. Meredith gives DeLuca instructions for the pre-op care. Richard appears in the doorway. He wants to talk to Meredith. They find a quiet lounge and sit down. He asks when she last spoke to her dad. It was when Lexie died. Richard says that he's sick. He heard from an AA friend that Thatcher has AML. He's in hospice and only has a few weeks to live. Meredith doesn't react. She thanks him for telling her and leaves. Amelia searches for Betty amongst homeless teenagers in a park. Owen also looks for her in a crowd of people downtown. Teddy grabs a girl in a group of teenagers near the Pacific Science Center, but it's not Betty. She apologizes. Maggie shows Meredith what she's working on, but Meredith is lost in thought. She shares the news about Thatcher. Thatcher doesn't know Maggie exists. That's how much of a non-father he is. He also didn't tell her he was dying. Jackson comes in with a coffee for Maggie. Meredith asks how he would feel if he found out his deadbeat dad was dying. He'd be conflicted. He's not sure if he would want to say goodbye. Meredith leaves. Michelle tells the doctors that her son J.J. was climbing a fence. Link did the same thing as a kid. He takes a look and does some quick tests. Levi correctly guesses it's a humerus fracture. Link asks Levi to get an X-ray. J.J. wants a cast like a friend of his had last year. Jo and Bailey are roaming the halls. Bailey finds Casey and nurses handling the death of a patient of hers. Ned coded, presumably due to a clot. Ned was an organ donor and blood match for Roberta. Bailey checks with Casey how long ago Ned was pronounced dead. Casey replies 7 minutes. Bailey calls 5 minute rule and starts CPR. Jo and Casey think she's losing it. Bailey says they are going to bring the liver back to life. Bailey forbids Casey from getting Alex. She has read case reports from Europe. If they get Ned on ECMO and use a normothermic perfusion system for the liver, they can save it and give it to Roberta. Meredith is watching Flor and her family when Link shows up next to her. He wants to take her to dinner. Meredith says her matchmaker has a list and it's not for his kind of guy. He's an emergency kind of guy. He says Jo will heartbroken. Meredith asks about his deal with Jo, but he replies by asking about her deal with Alex. Bailey and Jo are removing Ned's liver. His family was happy that some good can come from his death. Casey has prepared the perfusion system. They hook the liver up to the tubes and wait. This is the good kind of stress, Bailey says, contrary to wondering if your husband is dead. Moments later, bile appears in a bag. The surgeons cheer. Jo tells Roberta that the liver is functioning, but Roberta's cautious. It's a directed donation, Jo explains, as long as the organ procurement center clears it for usage. Roberta thinks that won't happen and talks about her funeral again. Denise says some people actually want her to live. Roberta wants to live, too, but she's preparing for the reality that she won't. When her father died, she wanted to throw herself on his casket and weep. Instead, she wrote jokes to make his friends feel better at his eulogy and then she spent 10 years crying over dog food commercials because her grief needed some place to go. Denise deserve to weep. Denise says it's a good speech, but Jo needs her consent for the liver. Roberta consents. Andrew enters Flor's room to take her up. Flor is not happy to hear that Andrew will be in her surgery. She doesn't want him in there. Andrew picks up on the fact that she has a small crush on him and pretends he has a busy day, so he'll sit this surgery out. He leaves the room and family forms a prayer circle. While waiting for J.J.'s scans, Nico invites Levi for a drink, but he turns him down. Nico guesses he has a date, but Levi denies that. Nico asks if he has a boyfriend. Levi says no and asks if it seems that way. Levi asks Nico if he does. Nico says the fellowship's year is a relationship killer, but he's open to meeting someone. J.J.'s scans come up, revealing a mass on his humerus. An excited Jo shows Alex the liver in the perfusion system. He can't believe UNOS approved it. Jo says they didn't, since it's not up to them. Bailey comes in and says they are waiting to hear from the procurement center. Alex orders them to shut this down, because if it fails, they risk their standing with UNOS. With Flor on the table, Andrew tells Meredith in the scrub room why he's not scrubbing in. Andrew says he was looking forward to working with Meredith, but she says there will be a lot of chances for that. Meredith enters the OR and shows Flor that Andrew is waving at her. The ortho team tells Michelle that they found a mass. They'll need to do a biopsy. Michelle realizes it's cancer and starts weeping. Link says the good news is that they caught this early. J.J. promises his mother to not climb fences again. Jackson brings Maggie four different types of lunch so she can choose. He wants to make up for not having been a good boyfriend lately. She appreciates that, but she can't eat. She's feeling sad due to all the grief in the air today. It makes her think of her mother. She prefers to work instead of talk. He leaves her to it. With Richard watching from the gallery, Meredith and Alex are operating on Flor while discussing Andrew backing out. Alex heard about Thatcher from Jackson. She's not sure what to say. Alex suggests she take some time to go see him, but Meredith is not sure she wants that. His father disappeared on him, but he got to say goodbye. She asks if 5 minutes at the end made up for a lifetime of nothing. She opened the door for Thatcher by giving him a piece of her liver, but he did not walk through it. They only spend time together when Lexie forced them to and after her death, he disappeared completely. Meredith doesn't need to grieve Thatcher because he has been a ghost for years. Alex comments on the irony that their career is fending off death while Flor's family is celebrating it. Meredith corrects him. They are celebrating the dead, not death. Jo is complaining about Alex forbidding her procedure to Link. Link tells her he asked out Meredith, who rejected him. Jo says Meredith did that to her, too, but she came around. Nico and Levi come up with J.J.'s biopsy results. It's an osteosarcoma. Jo wants to comment, but Link cuts her off with a quick affirmation. Teddy, Owen, and Amelia come back home. Teddy suggests they call the police. Amelia agrees, but Owen says teenagers do these things. Betty's not a regular teenager. 15-year-old Amelia once disappeared and her mother called the police, who found her right before she was about to jump off her friend's roof while high on pills. Amelia needs a meeting. Owen will take her to one. Teddy will stay at the house in case Betty comes back. Before following her out the door, Owen apologizes to Teddy for Amelia's stressing out. "And I'm pregnant with your baby, Owen," Teddy says to herself once she's alone. Meredith and Alex tell Flor's family that everything went great. Alex takes the family to the PACU. Meredith stays behind with Flor's abuela, who shows her their ofrenda and the pictures of their deceased family members. They are all with them now. The abuela hands Meredith two marigold flowers, which are said to help guide the spirits back to the world of the living, just like everything else on the ofrenda. Bailey watches Denise and Roberta and then checks her phone. All her worried texts to Ben are unanswered. Jo shows up to answer Bailey's page. Their liver was approved. Bailey tells her to prep Roberta. She kept the liver alive against Alex's orders. Jo thinks Alex won't forgive her, but Bailey says she won't forgive herself either if Roberta dies while they could have prevented it. Meredith's on her date with English professor Daniel. She says her father used to be one, too, and then rambles about how fathers get all the credit just because they accomplished the most basic of human biological functions. Her father wasn't a father to her so she doesn't owe him. And it shouldn't always be the child's job to forgive parents just because they are their parents. She won't put herself and her kids through another death just to make him feel better. While Levi is applying a temporary cast on J.J.'s arm, Nico tells Michelle about the type of tumor they found. Michelle breaks down so Link takes her out of the room to talk. Link tells her she does not need to be scared. He had the exact same tumor on his femur when he was a kid. They caught it later than they did J.J.'s and he made it through. Michelle stops crying. Link admits there will be scary parts. The saddest part was seeing his mother be sad and also losing his hair. Michelle laughs and Link tells her that's what J.J. needs to see. He tells her to take a moment and goes back inside. Link asks J.J. what color cast he wants after the surgery. J.J. asks if he's going to be bald like his grandfather. Link admits he might be for a while, but it will grow back. J.J. wonders if he'll look weird. Link grabs a pair of scissors and cuts off some of his hair. He hands the scissors to J.J. and tells him to cut, but Michelle comes in and stops him. Jo and Bailey finish up Roberta's surgery. They check with the doppler; the blood flow sounds good. The liver is functioning. They are exhilarated until Jo spots an angry Alex up in the gallery. Jackson brings Maggie marigolds in her lab. He knows she's busy, but he thought she might like some company. He leaves her to her work. Andrew checks on Flor post-op while she asks about some of his favorite things. She also asks if he has a girlfriend. He says he doesn't. Owen returns home with Leo. Teddy informs him Betty didn't show. She wishes she could have done more. Owen says her being here is more than enough. Teddy brings up her hospital visit last month. He think he should have called and told her about Leo. He admits he felt embarrassed when she saw him, because he knew how it looked to her after she accused him of not being able of being alone. But he's always wanted a kid and Leo is not just him not being able to be alone. And then Leo turned in Betty and Amelia. Teddy asks him if he's happy. Leo starts crying so Owen goes to put him down for the night. Teddy puts on her coat and leaves, realizing Owen is happy where he is now in his life. While waiting for the elevator, Meredith contemplates calling her father, but decides not to. Link comes up and she notices the hair. He grabs her phone and puts his number in her contacts, in case of emergency. Andrew comes up and compliments her on the flower she has tucked behind her ear. She asks about his date. He jokes Flor was out of his league and asks about hers. She says she scared him off. The elevator doors open and both Link and Andrew step up to hold the doors open for her. She walks off to take the stairs. Jo, Casey, and Bailey inform Roberta and Denise that the liver is fully functioning. Denise starts crying with joy. Roberta thanks her doctors. Jo notices Alex observing them from outside the room. Nico gets on an elevator with Levi. He asks him how his day on ortho was. Levi tells him he's a great teacher. Nico then pulls him closer and they share a kiss. They stop when an orderly gets on the elevator. Levi has trouble gathering himself. Once they are alone again, Nico apologizes. Levi says it was perfect. It was his first time doing ortho. He's been focusing on general and it never really felt right, but he liked ortho. Nico realizes it was his first kiss with a man. He apologizes, because he would never have done that if he had known. Levi is his type, but he can't teach Levi how to come out; he's been through it. He steps off the elevator. "I thought this was a teaching hospital!" Levi yells after him. Jo and Alex argue as they enter his office. He suddenly kisses her and admits to being turned on by her genius. He's learned that he can do two things at once. Their kissing is interrupted by nurse Frankie yelling from the hallway that they can all see them. They close the blinds. Flor sleeps with her parents by her side. Bailey checks her blood pressure, which is 180/97. She sighs and texts Ben they need to talk on his next day off. Maggie looks for a picture of her and her mother on her phone. She greets her mom. Owen sits down on the couch with Amelia, who worries that Betty might be dead. He takes her in his arms and attempts to comfort her. Richard is visiting Ollie's grave. He admits it's been hard. He hasn't been going to meeting because they remind him that she's gone. On her way out, Meredith is visited by spirits from deceased loved ones: George, Lexie, Ellis, Doc, Derek, and Mark all visit her. She pulls out her phone and makes a call, asking if she can come over. Alex opens the door of the loft to Meredith. She wanted some company. Jo is cutting Link's hair in the kitchen while drinking pair. Meredith asks for the scissors and takes over. Jo and Alex watch them from the couch, agreeing the two of them look good together. External link * Category:Day of the Dead Category:2018 releases Category:Episodes Category:ABC Studios Category:Originally aired on ABC